


I'm thinking

by kitkattaylor



Category: Phan, Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012, 2018, Angst, Anxiety, Break Up, Depression, Established Relationship, Healing, Heartbreak, Insecurities, M/M, Poetic, Ruminating, care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14026029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkattaylor/pseuds/kitkattaylor
Summary: Dan lately





	I'm thinking

**Author's Note:**

> This is not speculation or theorizing !  
> I got a craving to write angst?  
> I've tried to write this like how you might think - ruminating, and a bit all over the place. So sorry if it's a little confusing! I hope you at least get the progression of emotion.

I’m thinking maybe you were right.

He had been handsome. Slightly tanned, golden blonde. A teacher’s assistant; liked Radiohead. And he was good. He was careful, knew where to kiss. I tasted of the red wine and I felt adult because of it. I was his one night stand and he was mine. But look again and I was just lying there, and the bed was creaking and I noticed that, and I was thinking about how the next one would be better; hoping he would fill me as good as you did.

 _Yeah_ , I do this all the time, _I’ll be going home now, thank you._

You don’t understand how scary you are. You and your way of knowing me better than I know myself. Logically, I think you just point out the obvious, all these things I run from: hide from. He was the second man I ever slept with.

I can’t concentrate on my own. I really hated how you said _think about it_. And you said it so soft, it landed feather-light on my brain and I wanted to bat it, bat it from the air. I hit myself, palm to skull. You didn’t see it. I curled inwards and rocked where I sat on the edge of the bed, our bed, clawing a little at my hair because I _couldn’t think about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it._

I'm thinking about six years ago. I had gone walking and the flat still felt smaller when I returned. Like the walls were pressing in. You didn’t want to push it. It had already been raining but I didn’t go back for an umbrella. My clothes clung to my body and it made me itch. I could hear you in the shower but my heart was already in my throat. I was reckless so I opened the door to you naked. The fuck you must have thought; I was a picture of melodrama, pooling black ink onto the white tiles. I don’t remember your face, maybe because I didn’t want to look at it. You reached for me and pulled my cold back against your warm chest. I shrunk in the circle of your arms and you squeezed like you knew it: how I was slip, slipping from your embrace. Your nose brushed my ear and your words washed down my collar. I caught you saying _please_ , _please_ something, my name; I was conscious of my voice silencing under the water, of my throat shrinking too small to speak. I busied myself with the difference between _a break_ and _breaking up._

When it was just the shower, the noise, and I stood feeling bloated, you breathed up into me and your head dropped from my shoulder to my spine, and there you sealed me a kiss so light I doubted it. _And I still love you_ , you said, because I’d confessed, somewhere. I had my eyes closed when you left, and then I was glad for the water. I scrubbed over the spot a ghost had kissed. It was funny how absent I’d felt, with how much I ached.

We’ve always been forward with I love you’s. (My sweat is cold. My dick looks raw. You’re there and you’re gone; I can’t keep you still.) I need you home to fuck me so I shut up. Hate fuck me, if you must. Be my medicine. We were just children, when we fell. Scribbled whisperings: _I love you I love you too._ Exciting. Giggle. I’d said it like _I think I’m in love with you_ but I didn’t fucking think about it.

 _Think about it._ I knew you’d ask. _Phil,_ it’s weird, it’s mother’s day, and I’ve only sent my own mother a card- _Phil,_ I need to be here to work- _Phil_ , it’s _fine_. We didn’t talk, before our break up: only exchanged words, you ignoring the spaces. I spoke over them. And here I am, carving them out, pressing _space space space_ and pushing your paragraphs down, swallowing them whole. And it’s not like you’re not the most selfless, giving person I fucking know, and God knows, I don’t deserve you- You, and your stupid distractions, your way of calling it ‘bedtime’, your regulation, your little concerned frown, the one between the brows... You give it all away in your eyes. And your hands, touching me like I’m something to count, as if you’re checking you’ve got all the pieces of me. As if I don’t know you worry; as if I’m not painfully aware how hard I make you work.

I’m sorry I shouted but it got so loud I had to speak over it. You couldn’t feel it, how half-finished sentences burnt and filled me with ash, made me so heavy, and you didn’t see it, you couldn’t understand _why_ I had to finish that _thought_ , why couldn’t I leave it, nothing had changed, but every time you interrupted I had to remember what I’d been thinking so I could finish thinking it later, I needed space, I ran out of space- _It doesn’t matter_ , you whispered, leading me by the shoulders back to bed, where the room glowed like something bleached. _You were still brave_ \- I’m not. You tucked me in like a child, but then I was pouting. I was still defending myself. Do you know I prayed _please don’t sit down please don’t sit down_ before you sat down, a radiating presence in the corner of my eye, sat cross-legged and patient on the carpet. Your hand on my ankle was like a paperweight; you might not have stayed if you’d known what I was really thinking. It wasn’t consoling I needed.  

The irritation turned me into a chalkboard and every sound was made of fingernail scratches. The brush of your hand as you took my phone, apologising; the soft click as it locked. I joked the text posts were imprinted in my eyes, I’d been reading them too long, and you kissed each eyelid. The tracing of your thumb on my forehead; the weight of your hand on my neck. Did you know I wasn’t sleeping? I’d been sleeping for fifteen hours. The pulse in your thumb was nervous. I was so fucking frustrated with myself and then you squeaked open the door and wheeled in that suitcase and told me there was time to change my mind. You’d done my washing, and packed it. _I think you need me right now_. Oh you said it so hesitant, I’m sorry how I took your words in a fist. You weren’t even arguing back. Between my outpouring you sighed and said _then I’ll stay with you,_ and I breathed in your sigh and how ugly a swear word is when it’s directed at you.

Maybe you were right. I can’t remember when I didn’t have this looming dread. When my shadow wasn’t on the wrong side of my body, towering over me and in the way wherever I stepped. We have it all planned. (I slept in your bedroom that night; it still had the cameras in it.) The coming out- Why do those words taste so acidic? Why are the letters so large and crowding? (You weren’t delicate so I guess you were angry; you managed to cover me with the blanket without touching my body. I kicked it off like it strangled me and the weight of the empty house collapsed into my ribs.) I wasn’t strong enough to regret it, but I regretted it. I wasn’t anything enough; I was doubtful. I hadn’t meant it to be a big statement.

I hadn’t meant it to be a big statement.

I hadn’t meant it to be a big statement so fuck was I not prepared for the

Gay

Gay

Gay

The _Dan doesn’t leave the house so who else he fucking?_

We have it all planned; we want to make it so obvious it’s not surprising. But then the walls were growing tight again and I was thinking of the naked slap of flesh on flesh, a hand on my neck, and the grotesque warped image of us holding hands- there was a stranger in my head, and he was embarrassing, and I ridiculed him. I was a terrifying face to meet in the mirror.

Didn’t I just recently tell you I finally felt like I was growing up?

(Six years older.) If you’d seen me in the shadows of the T.V or heard my feet in the pauses of dialogue, you didn’t say. That was where I began to exist: in the reflections, and echoes. If you’d been surprised, or concerned, all you did to express it was flinch when I spoke, something along the lines of ‘ _why do you insist on never closing cupboards.’_ I stared at your silhouette from across the room, from the doorway. You turned the T.V. off without meeting my gaze, or my question, and the absence of static plunged us into what felt like an abyss. ‘ _Where’s the Ribena_ ’ – my tone lacked the question, really. Your eyes quickly assessed me, and that was the only other indication I got that you cared. _‘I finished it.’_ You never finished it. I swung the empty glass in my hand and retreated. I suppose you did wait up, that first time.

My excuse was that I’d only had you. It seemed laughable, days later, when I’d still done nothing about what I said I’d do and there you were, with me, coming home from our first night out with friends, those official words of _broken up_ branded onto us. You and how I looked in your eyes, and how it was nice there for a while: how you let me look again. I failed somewhere around the seventh step and it suited you, then, to be taller as I made you trip and pulled you into me. You agreed bodily and we were starving, _God_ , how we kissed; how you scooped me from the lower back and I bent to your body. I gasped, and kissed your throat; you swallowed, and you were hot, so hot with blush and drink. I ran a finger to the seam of your shirt and opened my lips to lick against where you were burning- you’d seized my hand. You hurt. _You don’t want this_ , you said, and I was all breath, I couldn’t reply before you’d softened your grip, lingered, and dropped me.

You’d thought they were all pretty, and I’d teased you and it was okay. You’d caught me where I angled my phone – because I’d been doing that ever since this started: living on a tilt. It made my blood rise having you on my bed (because it _was_ my bed now) in your pyjamas, a warm mug between your hands. You took the phone from me like it were a game and I watched you, and I wondered on you because your eyes were so kind, and everything about you was gentle, from the curve of your back to the bones in your knees to the way your toes wriggled, the way strands of your hair got to rest on your forehead. It was a sting and a swelling of the heart. You punched me lightly on the arm and I frowned and you shrugged, because of course you didn’t know either. Alone again, I changed the settings back and I couldn’t help but give your voice to every man I saw.

We were teenagers: you sat at my piano so you had something to do with your hands. It was like you’d forgotten the girl really existed, that I wasn’t secretly dressing for you. I hopped one-footed from leg to leg and you stabbed a rendition of the left hand I’d taught you. There was no protocol for how to act; you didn’t know what room in the house to occupy. You told me _smarter_ and maybe I was dressing for you because when I called for you and you turned, crashing your elbow onto the high keys, I became mean, and dumb; I couldn’t suppress the urge to nudge my shirt apart, and your eyes were a spotlight I could guide by a slice of hipbone, a knuckle grazing stomach that was taught back then. I knew you liked the tan of my skin against the white. I had you by threads. My hands dragged slowly against the thumping of my chest, and you didn’t pretend not to watch as I worked to my collar, to the exact spot you’d have punished me with in earlier days. I savoured the deepness of your breath.

Because she had an initial thrill, in the strangeness. She smelled of vanilla and I liked the way she laughed. Her nails sparkled with the passing cars and I enjoyed her curves, running my palm over the silky hairs that covered her skin. But you filled space she didn’t: you satisfied, reclined over on that piano stool, your dark eyes roaming, your lips smiling, bittersweet but nodding, saying, no- whispering, ‘ _you’re not fair_.’

You were like a wet dream: it took the responsibility away. I slammed back against the wall and you smudged my lip down with your thumb, dipped your fingers inside. _Why haven’t you replied then? Why haven’t you replied, Dan?_ It was the first thing you said, after minutes of silence. I licked my lips, shook my head. You liked me cocky, and I liked you pushed too far – jealousy tasted delicious served in your love-bite. I’d known men would be the threat: a girl couldn’t give me what you could. The girls got boring and I was needy by then; the admiration online meant nothing, and these men started it crude and dirty. I’m quick to addiction, and they charged me magnetic. I wanted you to tug. I cornered you in the kitchen and exposed my hoarded collection. I gave you perfect innocence to defile, all wide-eyed, pointing at the messages. If it ever made you sad I didn’t catch it, because you stopped my everything with your eyes.

 _‘I should warn them.’_ Teeth nipped my earlobe. I swallowed around the intrusion in my mouth. ‘ _How you tease, Dan.’_ You dragged on my flesh and let it spring back. Hot breath smothered where you drew your head around, lifting my chin with one finger. My head dropped against the hallway wall. You hadn’t let me walk away. ‘ _You want me to see how easy it would be to lose you?’_ I moaned in protest, flicking my tongue around your fingers. I could feel you watching me. In a rush you melted into my neck and withdrew your fingers. Saliva slicked down my chin as your arm reached between my legs. _‘I’m not easy.’_ ‘ _Aren’t you.’_ You hooked into me. 

I lived on an _if_ – walking around the bend and around the bend until I was walking myself a circle. I should have known I was done by the fourth one because I listened to you flip over the pillow– and over the pillow– and soon the birds were tweeting and my eyes were dry from the light of my phone, and I was sitting up to the realisation: I had been reading fanfiction about myself. With you. I was a contradiction. I was shy to respond again, except that was a lie; I’m even better at denial than getting what I want. I’d tried the shape of the word again:  _bisexual_. _Bisexual-_ I’d missed the stretch: the scrape of stubble and leg hair and a voice vibrating low in my bones. You were my friend: carefully constructed. There was no place I didn’t act. And what a fucking lie it was that it had ever been about sex. I’d missed the weight of a man.

You; I’ve only been talking to you. I only need you to know me, to understand. Phil, can I apologise? You tell me again how I run and I am running, and hiding, you’re right. You had to give me the time to confront myself. Phil- _Phil_ , _tell_ me you understand that I’m not ashamed of you. Tell me you’d already seen through me and knew that: know that I’m still committed, how goddamn fucking _gay_ I am for you-

‘ _Don’t.’_ You’d took hold of my coat sleeve. What you didn’t know was that I’d been reading about our imaginary wedding, our children, your death- all the ways in which I hurt you, and all the ways you could forgive me. I’d needed air. I was so embarrassing, then- Your hair was pushed back and you were wearing your glasses. Between our doors, your fingers tightened and your mouth opened and closed on something desperate. ‘ _What?’_ I jabbed, a word against a bruise. You were so pale in the lighting. Your shirt was black. ‘ _Don’t go to him_.’ You’d almost stuttered. _‘I can’t...so, please-‘_

 _‘What do you want?’_ I demanded it. I shook you free. _‘What do you_ want _, Phil?’_ I slowly zipped up my jacket. You looked so helpless: panting. ‘ _You know...’_ You relinquished, eyes following the zip. The sound of you was so pained my heart leapt to it. ‘ _Phil!’_ _'Fuck you.’_ I laughed; you’d grabbed me. You pushed me against my door, your forehead pressed to my skull. You built taller shadows behind you. I slid my hand on top of yours, to where you’d stopped me, and assisted in pulling the zip back down. ‘ _Take it, if you want.’_ You whined somewhere in your throat and smoothed your hands over my shoulders, nudging the coat. You frowned, shook your head. You didn’t have to call me confusing; I confused myself. I angled your head and offered my lips to you. The coat fell to the floor and I could feel you against me.

‘ _I didn’t know_ want _before you..._ ’ I twisted my hand in the black of your fabric. You spoke too slowly. You trailed your hand up under my shirt – because you could – then dropped it. My knees trembled and maybe you felt it. You stepped back but your fingertips splayed against my heartbeat. I panted like a criminal. Your tongue flicked the roof of your mouth - too slow. ‘ _Why. Tell me the truth.’_ ‘ _Maybe to know I could be wanted by someone else.’_ Your glasses were mirrors. ‘ _You really don’t see this? How pretty you are?’_ Your hand wandered to my throat, thumb tracing over the pout in my lip. _‘How people look at us, waiting for you to wake up?’_

I slapped you away. ‘ _I don’t know, no, sometimes-‘_ You sunk against the opposing wall, perfect space between us. I watched as you swallowed, eyes never leaving mine. The silence was physical.

‘ _What...would you do if I called you gay?_ ’

I couldn’t breathe around its presence; you blinked.

‘ _How do you feel...about that?’_

 _(-I feel ugly and wrong and ridiculous and weak and afraid and I hate it I hate it I hate that being so in love with you means I can’t deny it and it had got so intense I tried to disprove it it’s sickening and I’m sick for you when my every sense screams_ home _with you- you-_ you _...)_

I crumbled to my knees. You gasped, sharp, and I swallowed you down. There were tears in my eyes and you told me to stop but I fucking adored it. You came and I kissed you fervently, amid your curls, your inner thigh- Your hands searched for purchase and I felt for the muscles needed for standing but maybe you couldn’t stand either because you joined me down on your knees and all in one breath crawled over my lap and cradled my face in a kiss. I knocked back against the door and we filled the narrow stretch of carpet, all limbs and sweat.

 

I’m thinking nothing.

My eyes are closed. Your warmth is permeating. My arms are wrapped to you one above the other: tight. I’ve turned my head where it’s fallen to your shoulder. The bathwater is cooling and my knees are cold. I’ve been steadying my breath to breathe with yours.

You stripped in silence and you were sharp and spacious with winter air. You let me wash you where you settled against my chest. You’d been texting me so all you said was the snow gave you sunburn and your freckles were multiplied. Time wasn’t important; somewhere you started drawing on my arm. Maybe they were words. I didn’t need to read them.


End file.
